376 LABRADOR 
The birds were delicious eating. They fattened almost 
to bursting on the Empetrum, or curlewberry, so abundant 
along the coast. The fishermen kept their guns loaded, 
and shot into the great flocks as they wheeled by, bringing 
down many a fat bird. About 1888 or 1890 the curlew 
rapidly diminished in numbers, and at the present day 
perhaps a dozen or two, or possibly none at all, are seen in 
a season. 
The rocky islands which line the Labrador coast have 
always been favourite breeding’places for various water- 
birds, chief among which may be mentioned the puffin, 
black guillemot, the common and Brunnich’s murres, 
razor-billed auk, great black-backed gull, glaucous gull, 
herring gull, Arctic tern, common and double-crested cor- 
morants, and American and Greenland eider-ducks. These 
formerly bred abundantly all along the coast, and before 
the arrival of the white man paid a comparatively small and 
unimportant tribute to the greed of polar bears, Eskimos, 
and Indians. This natural pruning, as it might be called, 
had little or no influence on the numbers of the birds. 
White men, however, with their insatiable greed and their 
more systematic methods, have created havoc in the ranks 
of these interesting water-fowl. In Audubon’s time the 
vile business of ‘‘egging,”’ as it was called, was at its height, 
and the horrors of the business are graphically pictured by 
the great ornithologist. He describes a shallop with a crew 
of eight men: — 
“There rides the filthy thing! The afternoon is half 
over. Her crew have thrown their boat overboard, they 
enter and seat themselves, each with a rusty gun. One 
of them sculls the skiff towards an island, for a century 
